Now here’s a pitch for a movie. An
aspiring US politician announces that, if elected, he will build a mighty wall
to prevent Latin Americans from entering his country. To everyone’s surprise,
this guy gets elected and very soon finds out, as he tries recruiting in Los
Angeles, that the only people he can get to do such poorly paid and
onerous work are… Latin Americans. Sort of a dark comedy? Maybe a big Latino
star as one of the building workers? Nice mariachi soundtrack?

Or maybe not. Because there already
seems to be a large and forbidding wall, albeit an invisible one, that prevents
Latinos, who now make up approximately half of the LA population, from
featuring in films about the city.

There have been three high-profile
productions this year in which Los Angeles has played a starring role:Hail, Caesar!, Café Society and La La Land, the last of which has high hopes
as we enter the awards season. Yet none of the three casts much light on the
millions of Latinos who live, work and play in the capital of film. How so?

There have been films in which
Latinos have played a leading role but few have had the sort of box office
returns that attract the big studios. Most recently, in 2014, Diego Luna, who
came to international fame along with his co-star, Gael García Bernal, in Y Tu Mamá Tambiénin 2002, directed an
eponymous biopic of the celebrated farm-workers’ union organiser, Cesar Chavez
– in many ways the Latino equivalent of Gandhi or Mandela, who have both had
reverential film treatments. It had a very cool reception.

Writing in Variety at the
time of its release, Peter Debruge described it thus: “Recognising
that Chavez’s victory in earning equal rights for migrant workers remains
scandalously under-taught in classrooms, director Diego Luna responds with a
biopic that feels more polite than political, counting on the worthiness of his
subject and the participation of a well-meaning ensemble to galvanise mostly
Latino audiences.”

Luna could be congratulated for at
least getting the film made as – tellingly – the idea had been floating around
Hollywood for decades. But it is significant that he is Mexican rather than an
Angeleno, and his presence as director was a reflection of the fact that most
of the leading Latino film names such as Bernal, Salma Hayek, Antonio Banderas
and Javier Bardem come not from LA but from Latin America or Spain. Three
currently high-profile, Oscar-nominated directors – Alejandro González
Iñárritu, Guillermo del Toro and Alfonso Cuarón – are all Mexican-born, so
things have certainly changed in some respects; 20 years ago, a now esteemed
Mexican cinematographer was told on entering an LA agency that they did not
need a gardener, thank you.

This theme was taken up last
February by Los Angeles Times writer
Hector Becerra in an article headlined “A film brownout – Latinos
largely left out of even cliched supporting roles”. The parts that seem to be
available for a Latino actor are most often that of a maid, a gardener or a
gang member.

Becerra told the Observer:
“Latinos in America occupy this spot where their American-ness seems to be in
silent dispute – and sometimes not so silent. Because immigration has never
ended, though it has abated compared to previous levels, there’s this lingering
perception that we’re sort of foreign. It’s also an issue with Asian-Americans,
I’m sure. I suspect that bleeds into popular entertainment. There’s generally
just a lack of nuance with portrayals of Latinos in American films – if they’re
portrayed at all.” He did note that the last two Star Wars movies featured
characters played by Latinos, including Diego Luna in Rogue One, but
added: “In general, I think Hollywood doesn’t really know what to do with
Latinos beyond roles that emphasise their ethnicity.”

In Cannes last year, Salma Hayek
spoke entertainingly about the way Latinos were still perceived in the
industry. She recounted an incidentin which a studio executive
told her she could have been the biggest star in America, but her Mexican
accent might remind people of their maids. She added that she had also been
tipped to star in a sci-fi film but the director had run into that brick wall
of preconceptions: “They said to him, ‘a Mexican in space?’”

The delicate issue of Latinos and
the US film industry goes back nearly a century. In the 1930s, Spanish language
versions of big Hollywood movies were shot at night on the same sets as the
English-language ones. Lupita Tovar, who died last month aged 106, starred in
1931 in a Spanish-language Dracula, acting by night
on the same set as Bela Lugosi did by day.

There have been some great and
highly regarded Latino films over the last three decades. El Norte,
directed by Gregory Nava in 1983, told the story of illegal immigrants whose
plight was summed up by Rosa, played by Zaide Silvia Gutiérrez, in a way that
still has an echo: “Here in the north, we aren’t accepted. When will we find a
home?” It was nominated for a best screenplay Oscar. La Bamba (1987) was
the admired biopic of Ritchie Valens, the musician who died with Buddy Holly in
the 1959 plane crash. Born in East LA (1987) featured the comedian,
Cheech Marin, better known to many old hippies as half of the Cheech and Chong
standup duo. Stand and Deliver, starring Edward James Olmos in 1988,
also packed a powerful punch. Mi vida loca (1993), directed by Allison
Anders and promoted with the tag-line “mothers, warriors, sisters, survivors”,
featured a largely unknown cast and a very young Salma Hayek. Ten years ago,
Wash Westmorland and the late Richard Glatzer directed Quinceañera, a
charming tale about the 15th birthday party of a girl played by Emily Rios that
won critical acclaim but was made on the tiniest of budgets. In 2011, A Better Lifetold the story of a
Mexican immigrant gardener trying to make a better life in LA for his sceptical
teenage son. With their Latino themes ignored by the mainstream, many of these
films have have been promoted instead by the Sundance and Telluride
film festivals.

Sometimes the stories have been told
by foreign directors: Britain’s Ken Loach made Bread and Roses in 2000, from a story by Paul
Laverty, about a strike by Latino janitors in LA. The idea came to Laverty when
he was on his way home from a Beverly Hills party and noticed that all of his
fellow bus passengers were from central America. “It was this very odd image,” said
Laverty. “These people were working at some of the richest real estate in Los
Angeles and having to wait for hours to get a bus home at night. They were an
invisible army working for some of the richest lawyers and agents in the
world.” Laverty recalled how surprised the extras, mainly LA cleaners, were
when they saw the film for the first time. “It was amazing watching their
faces. One of them said to us, ‘I never expected to see ourselves on screen.’”

There is a parallel universe of
successful Spanish-language films shown in Latino neighbourhoods that operate
beyond the radar of the big studios and in which soap stars play the main
roles. And there have also been many fine films about crossing the border –
most recently Cary Fukunaga’s Sin Nombre(2009) – but Los Angeles on
film remains a much whiter place than its reality.

“That’s LA – they worship everything
and they value nothing,” says Sebastian, the jazz musician played by Ryan
Gosling in La La Land. This is unfair on LA, a much more interesting and
elusive city than the “Tinseltown” putdown gives it credit for, but with that
wall about to raise tensions across the borderline states and beyond, now would
seem to be the time for Hollywood to grant much greater value to the invisible
army in its midst.

LOS
ANGELES IN FILM

Chinatown, 1974

Jack Nicholson is private eye J.J.
Gittes, hired to trailing LA’s chief water engineer Hollis Mulray at the height
of the water wars on the 1930s.

Boyz n the Hood, 1991

Released in the year of the Rodney
King riots, John Singleton’s searing debut – starring Cuba Gooding Jr, Laurence
Fishburne and Ice Cube – follows three young men as they grappling with race
and relationships in the city’s Crenshaw ghetto.

Woody Allen’s art deco-inspired,
jazz-soundtracked homage to 1930s Hollywood stars Jesse Eisenberg as nebbish
Boby Dorfman, the son of a Bronx jeweller who tries his luck in Hollywood.
Bobby is smitten with his uncle’s secretary, Vonnie (Kirsten Stewart), who
keeps him at arm’s length until, dumped by her boyfriend, she turns to him for
comfort.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

This is possibly my favorite "hispanic" movie moment. From "Aliens" (1986) Actually it's more of a "military moment", but Vasquez is my favorite character, with Newt coming in second.

No comments:

About Me

This is a blog about what interests me. Here you will find stories on animals, including animal rights material, cute stuff, and random informative posts about weird, beautiful and interesting creatures. Horses, Spotted Hyenas, and Border Collies will make regular appearances.
Also prominently featured will be posts about the Arts. Animation, photography, and the traditional forms, plus "outsider art," film and books.
Other things that will surface here are Japan & the Japanese, John Oliver, surfing, skateboarding and My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic, interesting places and structures,and my own art, writing and photography.
There will be rants. It's an election year, and I am beginning to have a political dimension to my personality. I am also horrified at the level of injustice and violence visited upon people here in the US and elsewhere - particularly against people of color, immigrants, and the LGBT community. Some of these stories will be very hard to read, but I believe we must read them to keep ourselves mindful of the racist and vicious things that happen every day, to speak out when we see discrimination, and root out its evil from ourselves.